I Heart My Cell Phone

In six short years, Americans have gone from loving their landline telephone service the most to more than half saying that they simply couldn’t live without their wireless phone, according to a report by Pew Internet and the American Life Project. In this survey, only 40 percent said landlines were indispensable and 43 percent couldn’t live without TV compared with 63 percent who couldn’t live without a land line in 2002.

What’s not to love about the wireless world? The freedom to go anywhere and still stay in touch is priceless. That freedom allows me to go skiing in the mornings while staying on top of business. Who wouldn’t love to pop into the ski lodge after a few runs down the slope, knock out a conference call with a cup of tea in hand, write some e-mails and then ski some more?

But I digress. The Pew study found that 51 percent of those surveyed said they wouldn’t want to give up their wireless phone – more than the 45 percent of folks who couldn’t part with Internet service. That makes sense, because you can actually use your wireless device to connect to the internet. Maybe the next time Pew does the study the lines between "the internet" and cell phone will be so blurred that they won’t be able to separate the categories. Some day – and I predict that day will be sooner rather than later – we will have at our disposal at least one device that lets us communicate through phone calls, use it like a word processor and surf the web. Every innovation in wireless brings me more opportunities to work hard, even while I ski, hike, and spend time with my family – how great is that!

Check out the report to learn more about how wireless is indispensable to people.